Gary B. Boyd 
Better Times – Facet Ii 
Searching for Better Times

From 32nd Century Wyoming, Spavin Lawson led a group of one-thousand refugees from the bunker that housed Resurgent City in a search for better times. The 22nd Century Government bunker had exceeded the design specifications of its creators thanks to the leadership of its first elected Mayor. A small city had expanded and prospered inside the mountain. The original population of less than two hundred souls had grown into nearly five-thousand. Unfortunately, the ancient nuclear power plant that provided the people the power to survive had leaked radiation for generations. The net effect of the radiation and the cave environment had altered the population. The people had developed genetic albinism with eyes well suited to the dimly lit cave city. Small in stature yet curious and adaptive, the Tribe followed the tall, dark-haired man and his wife without question. The outside world was foreign and frightening but within days, the people realized that The Judges of Resurgent City had held them in a grasp of religious fervor not based on factuality or reality. The journey they embarked upon was destined to lead them to the coast of Texas.
Spavin Lawson, physicist by training, believed the coast would provide better opportunities for the otherwise doomed population. He reckoned that South Texas coast would allow the petite, pale people to re-establish the human race on Earth. That location was further from the immediate geological and environmental effects of the Yellowstone super volcano eruption that had induced a global deep freeze ten centuries earlier. His greatest concerns for Humankind were the long term effects of the high radiation exposures and the lack of genetic diversity.